For over 100-years Pine Mountain has been focused on enriching lives and connecting people through Appalachian place-based education for all ages.
ABOUT THE COLLECTIONS
INDEX TO ARCHIVAL COLLECTIONS
An in-depth digital look at the ARCHIVE at Pine Mountain Settlement School. The collections include photographs, documents, biographies, objects, video and other materials that describe the institution from its beginnings in 1913 to the present day. Many documents are available in FULL TEXT.
Work is ongoing.
OUR VISION
The Vision of the Pine Mountain Settlement School Archives is to provide a voice that will encourage transformations in relationships to the culture of the Appalachian region through access to a unique body of material about the region. The rural settlement school movement and its impact on the people of Eastern Kentucky and the Southern Appalachians is a story that has sometimes been misrepresented, romanticized, or only partially understood. We envision an accessible, deep, vibrant and vital resource that will encourage exploration and collaborative dialogue about the hidden and sometimes contested history of rural settlement schools. We envision a broader dissemination of research materials across all public, private, and federal sectors interested in Southern Appalachian culture and life.
Our archival resources encompass over 105 years of the history of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its community. As a force that helped shape the Southern Appalachians, access has been limited by the need to travel to collections. Further, the communities that created the collections have rarely been offered easy access to their history. Online resources now offer an opportunity to broadly share primary sources. With our digital offering of biographies, photographs, documents, media, commentary, and more, we seek to provide an engaging resource. The rural settlement movement in Eastern Kentucky was a large movement but it was not uniform in mission or vision at the individual institutions. Pine Mountain Settlement School was non-sectarian, experimental and progressive in its educational programs. It remains committed to those foundations.
Today, we seek partnerships and collaborations that will enrich and enable broader dialogs on Appalachian culture and that will ensure that no one voice will erase the many. We are committed to sharing the memories and the disparate voices of Pine Mountain Settlement School and its community as they moved forward for over a century together in new times and new worlds. While our collections are focused on the twentieth-century, and a narrow geography, our future is in the twenty-first-century and as part of the global community. We are committed to a vision that will seek out new ways to grow our memories forward as vital and energetic educational models.
OUR ARCHIVAL MISSION
The mission of Pine Mountain Settlement School, is to “Enrich lives and connect people through Appalachian place-based education for all ages.” This mission continues a history of multiple enrichment programs for the local community and beyond. Once a boarding school with a progressive educational curriculum, Pine Mountain School’s recent educational programming has moved away from residential education to multi-faceted offerings of short-term environmental, cultural, medical, social and agricultural programs and workshops.
The programs at Pine Mountain Settlement School are evolving to meet the changing needs of the community and region. Today’s programming focuses on environmental education and educational support for students in local schools, as well as long-term partnerships with Appalachian centered programs and short-term workshops for all ages.
“Hidden” and largely inaccessible for many years, the materials in the rich local archive are being organized, digitized and offered through this growing website. The digital offerings are comprised of a growing selection of material from the School’s historical record. They echo life in the Southern Appalachians from 1913 until the present. The digital offerings highlight staff, community, buildings, writing, farming, linguistics, weaving, dancing, singing, drinking, funeralizing, politicking, and much more. It is our mission to reach out to a broad range of interests including those of former students, former workers, new visitors, old visitors, coal miners, environmentalists, farmers, teachers and the broader public. We are eager to encourage new scholarship, new insights, new directions and new friends for Pine Mountain Settlement School through this website. To visit the main page for the school click the link below. To access the Archive go to the INDEX. (Also at the top of the page)
PINE MOUNTAIN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL MAIN PAGE
http://www.pinemountainsettlementschool.com/
WHAT’S NEW!
SEPTEMBER 2017
“The sun is a–shining to welcome
the day, with a heigh-ho, come
to the Fair.”
“Fair Day anywhere is likely to be a gay time, but at Pine Mountain, it is one of the rare occasions, along with the spring “graveyard meeting”, the occasional “working”, and the fall stir-off, when widely separated families come and enjoy each other’s company. It always begins, and did this year, with a protracted and delightful program of “norating”. With no newspaper to send the news, we did it on foot and by grapevine, down Greasy Creek, and Big and Little Laurel, Turkey Fork, Isaac’s Creek, and to far away Line Fork and Bear Branch, and lonely Puncheon holler, until every oldest and least one had word of the Fair.” [Alice Cobb, 1937]
On September 9, 2017, come join us at PMSS for another Fair Day and Sorghum Stir-off
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH: SORGHUM “STIR-OFF”
Sorghum Stir-off – Henry Creech, Harrison Cornett [nace_1_047b.jpg]
” … we looked at the trough, which was like a wide flat boat, divided into two sections, and about three-quarters full of dark liquid, now beginning to foam on the top. It was not yet ready because the foam was still green, although some of us were licking green foam to Henry’s mild disapproval. He said it “would cause stomach complaints” before it was ripe.”
“Then you cook it, and it has to cook for about eight hours, ’till it boils up and foams over the top, and when the foam comes on you skim that off and throw it away—and finally it’s a nice yellow foam, and that’s when it’s good for licking—and then you decide when it’s done and pour off the molasses in a lard can, and that’s all.”
AUGUST 2017
GUIDE TO LOCAL HISTORY SCRAPBOOK
More tales. These tales and gathered materials come from a scrapbook titled “LOCAL HISTORY” and includes a diverse selection of material about southeastern Kentucky. Many in the region will recognize ancestors and places that are familiar. The newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and small pamphlets are filled with stories that catch the imagination and sometimes are not far removed from life in the Eastern Kentucky mountains of today. If you feel inclined, transcribe a few of these short articles and send us the transcription as a word attachment. We will publish your good work and possibly your comments and you will make reading sooo … much easier. Send to the email listed below.
office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com
THE “GREEN BOOK” and ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Mary Rogers was a central force in the creation of the Environmental Education Program. The “Green Book,” the early manual for the Environmental Education program at Pine Mountain, was largely the work of Peter Westover and Nat Kuykendall. Afton Garrison, Candace Julyan and John Rupe and others also contributed to the manual. But, it is Mary’s inspiration that shines through the thoughtful concepts of the 1974 publication. The manual was groundbreaking. It continues to be consulted and refined by the current EE staff at the School as they develop new programs for our outdoor — and indoor classrooms and as they share their knowledge with students and educators.
SEE WHAT’S NEW! ARCHIVE for older featured collections
Visit our partnering institution H-Net Commons and H-Kentucky.
The partnership was launched June 1, 2016 with the assistance of Dr. Randolph Hollingsworth, Assistant Provost, University of Kentucky; President, H-Net:Humanities & Social Sciences On-Line,H-Kentucky and currently editor of H-Kentucky. On a visit to PMSS Dr. Hollingsworth described the goal of the H-Net network: [It] “…seeks to create an online collaborative environment to facilitate communication and the exchange or scholarly and pedagogical ideas among teachers, researchers, scholars, advanced students, and related professionals (e.g. local historians, librarians, archivists, genealogists), all in an open, democratic, respectful and non-partisan manner. H-Kentucky especially welcomes those who are interested in Kentucky, as well as those in any history/humanities field who live and/or work in Kentucky.”
For instructions on subscribing to H-Kentucky go to:
http://networks.h-net.org/node/905/pages/965/subscribing-network
COMMENTS & CONTACT
Comments and feedback regarding the material on this website or on the institutional history are welcomed. Comments directly on the website are not enabled.
Please contact office@pinemountainsettlementschool.com or (606) 558-3571 with your inquiries and comments. We welcome your identification of people and activities on our site and, particularly, corrections to the record.
PMSS ARCHIVE MISSION STATEMENT (extended)
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
ORAL HISTORY RELEASE AGREEMENT
ORAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION – PRINCIPLES AND BEST PRACTICES
USE AGREEMENT (Reproduction Request Form)
ABOUT OCR TEXT
Many of the texts included in this site have been automatically generated using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. In some cases, these texts have not been manually reviewed or corrected.
OCR enables searching of large quantities of full-text data, but it is not 100% accurate. The level of accuracy depends on the print quality of the original publication and its condition at the time of microfilming. Publications with poor quality paper, small print, mixed fonts, multiple column layouts or damaged pages may have poor OCR accuracy.
CITATION OF MATERIALS
Any PUBLIC use of material must properly cite Pine Mountain Settlement School in the following manner:
“[Identification of Item],” [Collection Name] [Series Number, if applicable]. [date], Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. [date accessed]
STATEMENT REGARDING PRIVACY
The manuscript collections and archival records in the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections may contain sensitive and/or confidential information that may be protected under federal and state right to privacy laws and regulations. Researchers who wish to publish and users who may share material from the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections are advised by this notice that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in some collections within the Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g. may be a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy if facts concerning an individual’s private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person.) for which Pine Mountain Settlement School assumes no responsibility.
If you believe that your privacy rights have been invaded please notify the following.
office@
See INDEX TO COLLECTIONS for an overview of collections and series.